Thirteen killed as Israel keeps up strikes on Lebanon

Sun Aug 13, 8:06 AM ET

TYRE, Lebanon (AFP) - Thirteen civilians, including a mother and three children, were killed as Israel pounded targets across Lebanon despite expectations of an impending ceasefire.

Israeli troops were continuing to battle Hezbollah militants through the night near the southern port city of Tyre, after the military suffered its biggest single-day death toll of the month-old war, losing 24 soldiers.

Al-Arabiya news channel said Sunday seven Israeli soldiers were killed in the clashes on Sunday, but there was no confirmation from the Israeli army.

The bloodshed continued even after UN Secretary General Kofi Annan announced that the governments of Israel and Lebanon agreed to halt fighting on Monday.

Police said the mother, her three young children and their Sri Lankan maid were killed overnight when Israeli bombs flattened their home in the southern village of Burj el-Shemali.

Neighbours tried in vain to dig them out and rescue services had still not arrived at the site two hours later because Tyre was coming under continued raids.

Patients in a hospital in Tyre were in danger of suffering smoke inhalation after Israeli warplanes bombed a nearby filling station, sparking a huge fire, hospital director Jawad Najm told AFP.

Two rescue workers, including the chief of the Lebanese Red Cross in Tyre, Salam Daher, were wounded by shrapnel during raids near the hospital where they had been rushing to help extinguish the fire, police said.

Israeli raids killed two Palestinians and wounded seven others in the Tyre area as well as in the Ain el-Helweh refugee camp near the southern port city of Sidon, police said.

Three civilians were killed and 15 others wounded when Israeli war planes destroyed a house and a prayer building in the village of Ali an-Nahri east of the ancient city of Baalbek in eastern Lebanon.

Two civilians were killed and six others wounded in Israeli bombardments on a pick-up carrying gas canisters at the entrance of Baalbek.

In northern Lebanon, Israeli fighter-bombers destroyed two bridges in the northern Akkar plains that link the main city in north Lebanon, Tripoli, with the Syrian border, wounding six people.

The air strike on the bridge at Halba destroyed a large number of homes, causing the civilian casualties, said a hospital worker.

Two Lebanese soldiers stationed nearby were also wounded in the attacks, but none needed to be hospitalized.

The bridge in adjoining village was also destroyed. Eight other bridges in the area have already been knocked out.

Three buildings near a Lebanese army barracks at the southern entrance of Tyre were targeted by bombardments that left one civilian killed, four wounded and two still missing under the rubble.

Israeli fighter-bombers carried out over three dozen raids in the eastern Nabatiyeh region, destroying a three-story building and two structures used by Hezbollah's rescue service. Police were unable to provide any information about casualties.

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